“
Allison Prouty, who raises her hand for everything, helped give out the scripts while Donatello told us what parts we each had. When she got to me, she said, “Rafe, I think you’d make a fine Paris,” and everyone in the room started laughing, right at me. “Paris?” I asked. “Why do I have to read a girl’s part?” “Paris is a boy,” Donatello told me. “He’s one of Lord Capulet’s best men.” “Yeah, well, he probably still wears tights,” I said, but Donatello ignored me. “Listen to the language as we read through,” she told everyone. “Notice how every line has ten syllables. Notice the subtle rhyming. That’s not easy to do. Nobody wrote like Shakespeare. Nobody!” And I thought—hmmmm. Idea in progress, please stand by. “Let’s begin,” Donatello said. “‘Act One, Scene One.’ ” It turned out that this Paris guy (he really was a guy) doesn’t come in until page 12. That was good. It gave me time to work on my idea. Donatello probably thought I was taking notes like Jeanne Galletta and the other brainiacs, but I was actually hot on the trail of those 30,000 points. Ten syllables per line? Check! Rhyming? Check! By the time we got to my part, there were only a couple
”
”